Changing and Changes

I have a theory about why men are less adaptable to change than women and it's pretty basic: Females must be born with a genetic pre-disposition to better accept change. How would we ever survive everything our bodies and our minds go through through-out our lifespan if we weren't?

The first radical changes we experience happen the minute we hit puberty - We become emotionally unreasonable and don't know why -- One day we're happily playing Barbies, the next day, we're holding Ken's head under water in the sink and screaming "You Don't Understand Me!". We grow boobs, and have hair that requires shaving, and we start menustrating (which at first is extremely painful and scary but then we realize we will live through it and not only that, but we're going to have to live through it every 28 days for the rest of our freakin' lives, but it's still extremely painful).

Boys grow some hair. And their voice changes. Big whoop.

Next, young women marry and CHANGE THEIR NAME. Which is essentially a major shift in how you identify yourself and how you are identified by others. Please, who's idea was this? This symbolic change takes you from Miss "Hi, I'm young, cute, and available", instantly to "Even if you did think for a minute that I might be available you now have noticed my comfortable shoes and wedding band so don't even think about looking my way buster, I'm Mrs. PUT_HIS_NAME_HERE."

The next, and by far, the most radical change women experience is pregnancy and childbirth; I will spare you the gory details about the mental and physical changes that kind of hormonal volcano causes! There is a good reason our brain fails to recall the exact minute we felt our insides violently exit our bodies (yet another useful genetic miracle). But again, we women adapt, move on, and USUALLY do it again!

Many of us will then choose to make a change from successfully Employed career woman to Employer of any tactic necessary to get the kids to eat their veggies, keep their shoes tied, wipe their nose someplace other than your shoulder, and get homework done before dinnertime! With any luck, your former employment experience will have provided you with some skills you can carry over into your new position as the receptacle of all bodily fluids put forth by your children, but I doubt it.

What follows, when you've given up all hope of ever wearing designer jeans and silk blouses again, is a few good, mostly-stable years followed shortly thereafter by "THE CHANGE". Yes, before you know it, the kids are still hiding their peas in the vents and tripping over their shoelaces while you're sweating from your eyelids and frantically fanning your face! Menopause! Talk about a freakin' mind blower...Things (and I mean things you never even thought of) "shift" i.e. lower, stretch, shrink, wrinkle, etcetera. Moods play Nationals Finals Ping-Pong, hair thins, and turns grey e v e r y w h e r e! Supposedly, thankfully, you are finally free from your once a month unwelcome visitor...which is a great notion, but actually takes it's own sweet time to finally cease and desist once and for all, whilst you continue to ache, break, and fake it for the next oh, 10 or 15 years.

Guys lose some hair. Big whoop. I think that's why guys tend to freak out more than women during their late 40's early 50's - His 'changes' are discovered suddenly one morning, as he wipes the steam from the mirror, puts the comb to the top of his head and thinks to himself "Hey, what's my Dad doing in my bathroom? Oh My God! That's not my Dad - That's ME!" Suddenly there's no hiding the fact that he's not 20 anymore, no matter how often he goes to the gym or touches up with Grecian Formula, the young girls that once giggled at his bad jokes don't anymore, and besides he wouldn't have the desire or energy to do anything about it if one did happen to give him that "special glance"! I'm not being insincere or facetious here, no, I think I really am starting to understand the whole "mid-life crisis" phenomenon.

Holy Heck! By now we women have been dealing with freaky mutant body & mind snatching changes our entire adult life. Really! I believe that if women weren't programmed to adjust to radical changes from the moment of birth, mating and reproduction would cease to exist in humanity. So the happy by-product of our adaptability to these major life/body/emotional changes is being able to accept, and yes, even embrace, change! Because really, by the time our kids are in college, let's face it, we are READY for anything!!